Gott Ist Tot
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo*. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
*Solemn Chant Forever God.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
posted by Peach @ 8:29 AM
3 Comments:
Oh my God! Peaches! You came back! I missed you soooo much. I'm glad you're okay. I hope you'll come back again. See? I didn't forget you! :)
God is dead, eh? Nietzsche was a great writer, but a bit daft. The "God" we killed was our idea of God or our belief in Him, not the real McCoy! Who knows, maybe that's what he meant. Or maybe he thought they were the same thing.
"Requiem aeternam" is the introit for the funeral mass...my little boy sings it with us sometimes. "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis", "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and may perpetual light enlighten them." It's a beautiful chant... if you want to hear it, you can go here:
Listen to 'Requiem Aeternam'
It's the old Pope's funeral and as soon as the processional cross emerges, you can hear the boys begin, "Re-e-quiem ae-e-e-te-e-e-er-na-am..." Makes me cry every time.
So 'Requiem aeternam Deo' means "Requiem aeternam for God", Nietzsche is saying this is a Funeral Mass for God.
I really miss you. I hope you'll come back to your blog more than once a year!
Hey Peachi
Great post, I can see that your absence wasn’t for nothing ;)
Welcome back :*
I know you didn’t Jeff ;)) And I knew you would lol
And your half right; this was written at the beginning of modernization in Europe when the chief ideologies taking people into modernity where not religious but secularist. Religion & methodology were beginning to be viewed by some Europeans as not only outmoded but positively harmful & more than ever people were depending on logos as a means of extracting the truth rather than mythos. Even believes were coming up with new ways of arriving at true faith using rational thinking. This served the boom of invention & industrialization in this era but at the same time it shook early modern mans believes & put him off track when dealing with the subconscious & the ultimate significance of life, about which scientific logos had nothing to say.
So what Nietzsche had probably meant was that “Without myth, cult, ritual & prayer, the sense of the sacred inevitably dies. By making “God” a wholly notional truth, struggling to reach the divine by intellect alone, as some modern believers had attempted to do, modern men & women had killed it for themselves. The whole dynamic of their future-oriented culture had made the traditional ways of apprehending the sacred psychologically impossible” (from The Battle For God, by Karen Armstrong)
The link didn’t work but I looked up the mass .. loved it .. thanks for telling me what it was, I had no idea ..
Ayya,
Thanks 7obi ;)
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